If you are a tennis fan, then you know the US Open is finishing up and this year there has been some great play from US athletes. The last time an American man won the US open was when Andy Roddick won it 20 years ago. What you might not know about Andy Roddick is that at the Italian Masters in 2005, Andy had been declared the winner by the chair umpire on a serve called “out” by the linesman, but Andy knew the serve was in.
As his opponent, Fernando Verdasco, made his way to the net to congratulate Andy, Andy was calling the chair umpire to come down and look at the mark on the court. The ball wasn’t out, the call was overturned, and the game continued. Verdasco got another serve, and he won the point. He went on to win the game, the set and then the match. Andy Roddick lost hundreds of thousands of dollars that day, but he walked off the court with his integrity.
Integrity is another True Virtue that matters to God. A great picture of integrity is found in Psalm 15. King David was asking the question, who could experience God’s goodness and dwell in God's presence, and the answer was, those with integrity.
The one whose walk is blameless,
who does what is righteous,
who speaks the truth from their heart;
whose tongue utters no slander,
who does no wrong to a neighbor,
and casts no slur on others;
who despises a vile person
but honors those who fear the Lord;
who keeps an oath even when it hurts,
and does not change their mind;
who lends money to the poor without interest;
who does not accept a bribe against the innocent.
Whoever does these things will never be shaken. Psalm 15:2-5
This is what integrity looks like. It looks like doing the right thing even if it is difficult and painful. Integrity is not being perfect; it is being consistent and whole. The word integrity actually comes from the mathematical word integer which means whole. An integer is a whole number and a person with integrity is the same person in every area of their life. In all of our lives we have a professional area, a family area, a social area, a spiritual area, and a private area.
While how we live in some of these areas might be the same, we might also think, speak and act differently in different areas. We might treat people at work better than we treat people at home. We might say things at home that we might not say when we are at church or in our small group. And then there are the things in our private personal life that no one knows about and we want to keep it that way.
A person with integrity still has all these areas, but they strive to have Jesus guide them through them all. If we will allow Jesus to give direction to all our thoughts, words and actions in each of these areas, then as Psalm 15 says, we are going to find a solid foundation in life. We will never be shaken.
If integrity is being the same person in every area of life, the opposite of a person with integrity is a hypocrite. The word hypocrite comes from the Greek word hypokrisis which refers to acting on a stage. In the Greek theater, actors wore masks to portray who they were supposed to be in any given scene. That is really what a hypocrite does, they put on a mask and play the part in any given situation. They pretend to be one person when they are at work, another at home, and someone else at church. They say one thing and yet live very differently. We know integrity matters to God because some of the harshest criticism Jesus had wasn’t for tax collectors and prostitutes, it was for hypocrites.
In Matthew 23, Jesus calls out the religious leaders for being hypocrites 7 times. Here is one example. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. Matthew 23:27-28
God really does care about who we are on the inside and not just how we look to others on the outside. God cares about who we are and how we live when no one is around and looking. God wants our behaviors to match our beliefs not just when we are in church, at work, with our family or friends, or in the public eye, God wants our behaviors and our beliefs to match all the time.
Again, this doesn’t mean we will be perfect, because we won’t. There will be those times when we fail and it is in those moments God is looking to see how we will respond. Will we confess our sin? Will we ask for forgiveness from God and others? Will we own up to our failures and shortcomings and learn from them so that we can do things better the next time? Every choice and action is an opportunity to learn and grow.
You may have heard the story of a contractor who told his company that after 40 years of work he was going to retire. Every month he made sure they knew he was leaving and finishing up projects on his list. A few months before he retired, the owner of the company came and asked him if he would build one more home for the organization. The man was a little upset because he had been clear when his retirement was and that he was finishing up projects not adding new ones to his schedule.
The owner of the company pleaded with him to build this one last house and so he agreed, but his heart wasn’t in it. The contractor cut corners. He didn’t use the best sub-contractors, and he went cheap on all the appliances and fixtures. While the house looked good on the outside, the inside was not well built. When the house was finished and the contractor retired, the owner of the company said, because of your faithful service for all these years, our final gift to you is this, and they handed him the keys to that house.
Here’s why this story is important: each one of us is building our own home. Every decision we make will determine what kind of life we will have. Will we choose to be generous or selfish? Will we choose to do the right thing, or cut corners and take advantage of others? Will we honor others or dishonor them? Will we offer grace to people or judgment? Will we tell the truth or be filled with lies? Every choice we make is part of who we are today and who we will be tomorrow and if we live with integrity, our home will be solid and secure. We will be unshakable. If we have integrity, then nothing else matters. But the opposite is also true, if we don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.
Integrity matters and it is a virtue we need to develop in life. If you want to become a person of integrity, the place to start is to be bold and pray this prayer. Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139: 23-24
It’s not an easy prayer because if we ask God to search our hearts and point out the areas where we are struggling to be honest and faithful, God will point them out. Now the truth is that we probably already know the areas where we lack integrity and want to overlook them and move on, but if we are serious about integrity and this prayer, God will point out those areas to us again and again until we confront them.
If you do pray this prayer and want God to show you the areas where you might be struggling with integrity, one place to look would be at those places where you get the most defensive. Getting defensive when we don’t need to might be a sign of our vulnerability. There might be places where our desire to project ourselves as being better than we are causes us to exaggerate or lie. Instead of getting defensive when we are challenged in some area, maybe we need to quietly search our heart and see what lies behind our anxiety and fear.
A second place for us to look would be all the areas where we are critical with others. Is our criticism of others masking some weakness in ourselves? Are we critical of others because it helps us overcome our own insecurities and makes us feel better about ourselves? Instead of being critical in those situations, what if we examine our own heart and ask God to show us what lies behind our critical feelings. Is there something in us that needs to change?
The third and most difficult area we might want to examine would be to think about all the things about ourselves that we don't want others to know. Are there things we are hiding from others? Are there things we are trying to hide from God? The more we try to hide things in life and live our personal lives in the shadows, the less integrity we have, and the less secure our lives will be.
What we need to remember about these dark areas is that they are not dark to God. God knows about them, and God loves us in spite of them. What God wants is for us to be honest with Him about them, to walk in the light of His love and grace and move from darkness to light in our own lives.
Once we ask God to search us, the next prayer we probably need to be ready to pray is a prayer of confession. While confession is not easy, it is important to acknowledge the areas where our actions have been inconsistent with our beliefs. Maybe we exaggerated the truth to make ourselves look better than we are, or we gossiped about others to feel better about ourselves. Can we acknowledge that, make amends as we need to and learn from it? Maybe we have cheated on our taxes or cut corners in our finances or made ourselves look super spiritual to others when we know what lies in the hidden darkness of our hearts. Can we be honest and confess our sin to God and others? Confession is the first step in healing and becoming a whole person. There honestly isn’t going to be any integrity with confession and seeing forgiveness because we simply will never be perfect.
Living with integrity takes courage and faith because it can be risky. Doing the right thing doesn’t mean you always win the game, Andy Roddick will tell you that, but it does mean you will win in life. There are times that integrity will mean doing what is right and leaving the results to God. This is what Jesus did.
Jesus was a man of integrity. In the garden of Gethsemane, in the early morning hours on the day Jesus would be crucified, Jesus had a choice to make. He knew that to be faithful to God would mean dying on a cross, and he honestly didn’t want to experience that pain. So he prayed with integrity, My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will. Mathew 26:39
To do what God was asking Him to do was going to be painful. Jesus would have welcomed another way out, and he honestly told His father that, but to walk with integrity meant dying on a cross. While Jesus believed his death would be productive and redemptive, ultimately, He had to do what was right and trust God with the results. Jesus did what was right. He submitted to God, carried a cross, took on our sin, and died our death. Jesus did what was right and let God do the rest. And God did. God raised Jesus to life on the third day letting us know that we are forgiven and that the power of sin and death have been forever destroyed.
If we will do what is right, if we live with integrity and trust God with the results, things might not be easy, things might not work out the way we would want them to here and now, but ultimately, we will experience the abundance and fullness of life. Integrity leads to a life that is good, secure, and faith filled. If we have integrity nothing else matters because we have everything. If we don’t have integrity, nothing else matters because we have nothing. Integrity matters to God. It’s a true virtue that can make all the difference in our lives.
Next Steps
True Virtues - Integrity
Read Psalm 15.
● In what ways is this a good definition of virtue?
● What would you add to a definition of integrity?
● Who is the most integrity-filled person you know?
How do your beliefs and behavior differ in the different segments of your life?
The first step toward increasing integrity is to uncover areas of hypocrisy and darkness. To do this, use this prayer: Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. (From Psalm 139: 23-24)
Three areas of life to examine:
1. Where do you get the most defensive?
● What do these things reveal about your own weakness and vulnerability?
2. Where are you most critical of others?
● What do these things reveal about your own strengths and failures?
3. What are those areas in your personal life that you don’t want anyone to know?
● If there is hidden sin, confess it to God and ask for the grace and power to overcome it
● Consider sharing your personal struggles with a trusted friend.
